the black dove · old rose
The tips of his boots just barely touched the floor. The bar was a little high, but it was bearable, and in any case, he didn’t want to have to sit on his folded-up coat; then he reckoned his legs would dangle even more. And it was cold, cold as a gaol – he was pulling that coat tighter around him all the time, hunched into it, shuddering in a draft that must’ve been coming in from a dozen different places, curbed only a little by the crackling hearth and the whisky in his belly.
At this time of day, the Dove was fair crowded; that early Ophus dark was just starting to stretch over the sky outside, and a little red-pink light still drifted in from the slats in the shutters. Tom watched motes of dust drift on them, catch on the lights from the lanterns and the candles. A handful of scarred-up, travel-worn sailors dominated one side of the room, chortling and playing cards, knocking back their drinks like they hadn’t seen anything better than Low Tide in months. There was a low buzz of conversation, mostly in rough Estuan and Tek, although he could hear a couple of blond-haired kovs in the corner talking loudly in what sounded like Heshath.
With a glance of thinly-veiled irritation – and suspicion? – Spitz slid over another whisky on the rocks, and Cooke took a long drink, propping his head up on his hands and rubbing his temples. He took a drag on his cigar, coughing a little and sighing. He could just about feel the tense muscles in his back starting to relax. Across the Dove, some chip had started singing in a wavering, slurring voice, just barely audible above the buzz: it was in Mugrobi, Tom reckoned, because he didn’t understand a word of it, but something about it worked its way into his bones.
This was sure fucking something, he must’ve thought a dozen times that evening. First half of a second he’d got to himself in Old Rose, he’d slipped off alone to the Dove, determined to sit his erse down in his regular chair and nurse his regular drink and feel – if only for a moment, despite everything – regular. That had been the plan, anyway, all the way down the Arova, all the way since he’d started planning this clocking trip. If Hawke decided to put him at the bottom of the harbor before next week, then so be it, but he’d get to go to the Dove one last time and sit in his gods-damned chair and drink his gods-damned whisky.
That was the plan, at least. He wasn’t sure if this was making him feel better after all. In the first place, the Harbor didn’t look quite the same from a foot lower, and he reckoned he didn’t look quite the same, either, for all the mistrustful glances he was getting. (And the hungry ones, but hell – he was dressed down, but he was still dressed like a golly, and he couldn’t blame anyone who took him for an easy lift. He knew Old Rose, and he knew to be careful.) Being Anatole and walking into the Dove was different than being Tom and walking into the Dove, and he knew it. But he’d wanted to think it wouldn’t be, wanted to think he’d plop down at the bar and have Spitz talking to him just like he had seven months ago; he wanted to think the Dove would make him feel like himself again, if anything would.
And it wasn’t even the funny looks that bothered him the most, or the people he’d known since he was a boch treating him like a stranger – and the fact that he had to treat them like he didn’t know them, either, since he didn’t want to spook anybody. At the end of the day, the thing that really pushed all this fucking vodundun over the edge was the fact that when he sat at the bar, his feet didn’t touch the floor.
He was in his seat, his old seat in his old favorite haunt, and it felt different. It felt physically different, and it was breaking his heart.
Cooke wasn’t quite drunk yet, but the world was beginning to feel a little slow and a little warm, and he was starting to flush a little bit. He was twisted around a little in his chair, absently watching the sailors’ card game, but he wasn’t paying attention, and that’s why he missed it: the hand motion, the twitch of the lip. So when things exploded, he was actually surprised.
“You fuckin’ bitch, Adley, you fuckin’ weasel!”
“Havakda!”
One of the sailors – a big blond kov, Hessean by his accent, sunken eyes bright blue and red-rimmed and livid with rage, nose swollen and crimson – thrust himself to his feet, knocking his chair over with a clatter that turned heads. “You little shit! Admit it!”
“I ain’t done nothin’,” said a smaller man, a black-haired Anaxi, baring his teeth in a smile. He raised his hands. “I swear on me daoa, ye chen? I’d not –”
A third man, heavy-browed and sad-looking and thoroughly drunk, scratched his beard and muttered, “We’ve about had enough of your shit, Ads.”
“C’mon, Bartles!” Adley protested, giving the bearded man a hurt look. He stood up, looking again at the Hessean, dead serious. “Alioe, Lester, don’t be like this. So maybe I –”
Bartles muttered something else. It sounded to Tom like, “This ain’t about Rooks.”
“No,” snarled Lester, “no, no, no –” He thrust the table out of the way with a crack and a moan of protesting wood. Adley threw up his hands, but Lester was on him before he could defend himself. In the mangled slur of words – Adley’s bizarre screech, Bartles’ “oh, shit!” – Tom thought he heard the big Hessean say something about you fucked her, but he couldn’t be sure. In this mess, you couldn’t be sure of anything.
When it was Adley that knocked the Hessean on his erse, Tom snorted into his tumbler, glass jangling as he shook with a spasm of silent laughter. But Lester was up in an instant, and he’d put Adley into a sloppy headlock. All this put him in mind of something he’d seen a long time ago, a very faint memory of another barfight in another time – one in the Dove, one he’d maybe joined in on. The conversation around the Dove was livelier now, and Tom heard someone yell, “Put the stop-clocker in ’is place!” The Hesseans over in the corner were doubled-over with laughter.
Cooke turned back to the bar, finishing off his whisky and calling for another. He was feeling fuzzier by the minute; he thought he was just about starting to loosen up. Without really paying attention to who it was, he leaned over to the kov next to him. “Great Lady, eh?” he laughed, taking another drag on his cigar and blowing out smoke into the drafty air. “What do you bet it’s the Hessean comes out on top?”